Abstract

The primary thesis that I argue for in this study is that the eternal recurrence represents Nietzsche's attempt to ground a conception of autonomy on a naturalistic basis. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence offers a transformation of human autonomy in light of the experience of modern physics. The eternal recurrence represents the lesson of modern physics that we can find no laws within nature and that, consequently, we must give ourselves laws in the face of the experience of total, recurring meaninglessness, if we want to have coherently organized and meaningful existence. With its emphasis on self-legislation over moral judgment, Nietzsche's conception of autonomy remains Kantian, in a broad sense, but Nietzsche rejects both the Kantian model of the moral subject and Kant's moral metaphysics as antinatural. Nietzsche creates a norm of autonomy in which value legislation is given priority over value judgment without the need of postulating a fixed, Cartesian self or a transcendent metaphysical realm. ;In support of my main thesis I will argue for the secondary thesis that the principle of Nietzsche's naturalism is located in the idea of the will to power. I read the will to power not as a metaphysical principle but rather as a methodological principle of interpretation. As an interpretive principle, the will to power provides the means to overcome the three basic antinatural positions that Nietzsche associates with traditionally conceived morality. It provides a non-dualistic conceptual framework that opposes the unconditional will to truth and eliminates the dualism of the faith in opposite values. At the same time, it provides the means to challenge the Kantian conception of universal moral norms by undermining the presumption of moral equality